Kirby Baxter lives a charmed life. The retired comic book artist has enough money in the bank to last several lifetimes and his sideline as a consultant for Interpol ensures that life never has the chance to get boring.

Fresh from a mysterious adventure in Lichtenstein, Kirby decides to relax and reconnect with some old friends at Omnicom - the world’s largest comic convention. Its all fun and costume changes until schlock horror superstar Erica Cross turns up dead. Very quickly Kirby’s past catches up with him and puts him up to his neck in a deadly murder mystery.

Kirby must deploy his unique skills of deduction and detection before the body count rises and ruins OmniCon for everyone.

Product description

Product Description

A classic Golden Age murder mystery brought bang up to date.

Kirby Baxter lives a charmed life. The retired comic book artist has enough money in the bank to last several lifetimes and his sideline as a consultant for Interpol ensures that life never has the chance to get boring.

Fresh from a mysterious adventure in Lichtenstein, Kirby decides to relax and reconnect with some old friends at Omnicom - the world’s largest comic convention. Its all fun and costume changes until schlock horror superstar Erica Cross turns up dead. Very quickly Kirby’s past catches up with him and puts him up to his neck in a deadly murder mystery.

Kirby must deploy his unique skills of deduction and detection before the body count rises and ruins OmniCon for everyone.

Customer reviews

Most helpful customer reviews on Amazon.com

Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
3 reviews

Lars Walker

5.0 out of 5 starsI’ll confess I picked this book up because I like the author’s blog

23 June 2016 - Published on Amazon.com

Verified Purchase

I’ll confess I picked this book up because I like the author’s blog. Duncan MacMaster is the proprietor of The Furious D Show, an excellent movie blog. In spite of the handicap of being Canadian, MacMaster writes with authority and wit on the business of Hollywood (though, like so many blogmeisters, he’s been posting less and less lately). But the more I read A Mint Condition Corpse, the more I liked it for its own sake, and the more fun I had.

MacMaster’s knowledge of Hollywood provides a great background for this story, which deals with comics fandom and movie making. His hero is Kirby Baxter, a famous comic book artist who has been out of circulation for a couple years. On the same day he was fired from his job, he won the lottery. After collecting his riches, he fled to Europe. There he got involved in a couple criminal investigations, employing his expertise in reading people’s faces, which he learned from a magician uncle who did a mind reading act. His contributions to police operations earned him honorary status as an Interpol consultant, and the loyalty of a giant Czech former policeman, who became his constant, protective shadow.

Now he’s decided to reconnect with his old friends and fans. He flies to Toronto to attend Omnicon, a huge comics convention. He runs into Mitch, his diminutive, dirty-minded old buddy, and Molly, a fellow artist whom he helped get started in the business. He also meets a supermodel turned actress who has been cast in an upcoming superhero movie and is at the convention to promote it. She turns out to be every geek’s dream – she’s a fan of his work, and sends out clear signals that she’s interested in him personally.

And then there’s a murder. Employing his people reading skills, Kirby assists the police in cutting through a tangle of personal and business motives (here the author’s knowledge of the movie industry adds a lot to verisimilitude), putting his own life in danger.

In description, the plot sounds like fanboy wish-fulfillment fantasy. But what makes A Mint Condition Corpse work is the way the author brings the characters to life and laughs (in an affectionate way) at the quaint customs and mores of the subcultures represented in the story. I really liked these characters, and cared about them. The book worked for me very well.

I recommend A Mint Condition Corpse, and I hope we see more of Kirby Baxter.

MacMaster's clever, twisty, wry whodunnit (and howdunnit) is fresh, smart, campy and incredibly fun. Kirby Baxter is an adorably unconventional hero, a nerd whose super senses register disturbances much too subtle for ordinary people to notice. And what more perfect setting in which Baxter can demonstrate Baxter's powers than a chaotic, noisy, colorful, crazy comic book convention with all its cosplayers, players, intrigue, desperate deal makers and geeks-in-love. To be honest, comics, cosplay, ComicCons, etc. have always left me cold. Until now. McMaster sold me on all the fantasy, the tension, the fellow feeling, the art of the deal and the art on the page with such skill and clarity that the comic book world became one of the great pleasures of the book. The bad guys were satisfyingly bad; But I feel for the good guys, especially Kirby's entourage: the kitsch-clothed Mitch; sweet, smart Molly, and the tall and silent mountain of a bodyguard, Gustav. Then there's the little matter of what really happened in Lichenstein to make Kirby one of Interpol's all time favorite geeks. I can't wait for book two. For more Kirby, Molly, Mitch and Gustav.

I bought this book because a sloth with pleading eyes on Twitter told me to. Sloth for the WIN.I adore whodunnits and this one is so clever. It combines my favorite things: quirky lovable characters, comics, conventions, and fandom.The author gives just enough spot-on description of this world while still moving the story along at a great pace.

The ending was totally satisfying and left me wanting more stories. This has the makings of a great series!